


Endurance

by stone_in_focus



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Anniversary, Drabble, M/M, Marriage, POV Kaidan Alenko, POV Second Person, Post Game, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 01:19:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stone_in_focus/pseuds/stone_in_focus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifteenth anniversary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Endurance

Fifteen years later, it’s still as cold in Vancouver as it ever was, but it doesn’t take away from the stark beauty that befalls the city early Saturday morning. The streets growing thick with the season’s first snow, not yet muddied by the usual crowds, you both shuffle out of a local breakfast place a little more lethargic than you went in, filled up on pancakes and sausage and the deep questions in life. Like, “Are you going to finish that?” 

The big stuff’s never as important as you think it is. Appreciating the small details is what matters. When you’ve lived long enough, things you once thought romantic and grand lose their enigma, and eventually, there come points where coordinating schedules, changing diapers, and paying the bills are your priority missions. Sometimes, you’re too busy trying to co-exist with someone who knows how to push all of the wrong buttons that you overlook how he still knows how to hit the right ones, too.

But you learn to see the comfort in the simple and the routine, and you’ve already had more than your fair share of excitement for one lifetime, anyway.

There’s a certain quiet about winter even in the heart of the city. The hums of activity along its inner circuitry slip past as nothing more than white noise, appearing and vanishing into thin air like the breath on his upper lip when you pull him close for a kiss in Discovery Square. The trees in the park are wiry and ashen with frost, not unlike the bristles of hair you feel against your cheek as you pinch him in the side before he can finish the inevitable “Is that an M-5 Phalanx in your pocket, or…” line.

Often, though, you’re the one who needs a good pinching.

In some respects, it’s like London all over again. Never dreaming you could’ve had a life like this. Having a few regrets but not many. Remembering all the moments you loved him in spite of the ones where you almost didn’t. As with every marriage, you’ve both had your bouts of pride, trying to stand taller than the other and only falling short. Like that time he holed up in a hotel and you got drunk, so drunk you took off your wedding band and didn’t put it back on even when he returned home three days later. 

But you need humility and grace just the same as he does, and for how much sweat and blood you’ve spent building a home, putting towards the  _chance_  to build a home, it’s easy to forget how that kind of power works both ways; how quickly a handful of careless words can burn it all to the ground. It took all your strength to stop staring down into the bottom of the bottle that night, but between heavy heads and weak knees, you found forgiveness in the cup of each other’s palm, through bloodshot eyes and wet cheeks—through the worse for the better.

And if it’s death till you part, well, you must be onto something if fate still hasn’t cut that final chord after all the times you’ve tempted it.

There’s no wind whistling through the trees now, though; just the calm after the storm. Two people who somehow found a way of fitting together and making it work when you didn’t. Fifteen years of bumping elbows while bent over railings; fifteen years of letting the other put an arm around the neck; fifteen years of an unspoken understanding that, for at least this moment you’ve managed to carve out for yourselves, all is right with the world. 

And really, that’s how the best things start. A cold beer, warm plate of food, and maybe the game on in the background doesn’t hurt, either.

Wouldn’t be so bad if that’s how it ends.

Your arms settle around his waist, giving him one more squeeze before you have to go pick the kids up from Grandma’s. Heh. Even being able to say you have to go pick the kids up from Grandma’s—now that’s…now that’s  _something._

Shepard, albeit accidentally, responds with a muffled burp. “Sorry. Shouldn’t have had those last couple pieces of sausage.”

What comes in and out of his mouth is really something, too.

In the evening, once David and Ash are tucked away and appetites for bedtime stories sated, you pop the corn and he props up on the couch, booting up a classic spy movie for the first of a double-feature in the Shepard-Alenko household. “Here,” you say as you hand over a mug of hot tea and nestle up next to him. “I put some honey in it for your cold.”

“I’m not getting sick, Kaidan,” he says. Then sniffs as he rubs a sleeve across his nose.

Still, you’re not planning on kissing him anytime soon. Not that you don’t want to. Because you  _want_  to. Even when his head rolls back halfway through the first film, drool sneaking out of the corner of his mouth. If only to get him to stop snoring.

You run a hand up his chest, and his lungs respond to your touch. “Happy anniversary, babe.”

“Mmm. You, too.” He grins, still half-asleep, but as he rubs his eyes, you can tell by the groan in the back of his throat that his leg is acting up again. It’s as good of an excuse as any to slip a palm along the inside of his thigh. “Yeah. Fought the Reapers and now can’t even manage to stay up until midnight. We’re really something, huh?”

“I don’t know. Seems pretty good being something. With someone.”

“Someone?”

“Someone.” His muscles go from tense to lax as you work the tissue in his leg, knee to groin. It’s a different kind of groan when they grow taut again. “And that someone might want to think about getting to bed.”

You try helping him off the couch, but he swats you away. “I can get up myself.” He leans forward with another grunt. “I think.”

No, you can’t get in as many seconds as you used to (unless it starts with “steak” and ends with “sandwich”), but you know it’s never been about the quantity. And hell, when it comes to flirting, it certainly hasn’t been about quality, either. It’s just about being something with someone. For someone. Because of someone. Knowing that for all the hardships, the petty arguments, the shortcomings and the disappointments over the years, most days, they’re nothing more than a blip on the radar when you wake up and roll into him, realizing you’ve been given another chance to watch that crooked half-smile appear.

And even though you know he’s long been an old soldier stuck in his ways like the best and the worst of them, you say it all the same: “Never change, Shepard. Never change.”

As you amble up the stairs, he slides a hand over your backside, giving it a firm squeeze.

You consider that a salute to fifteen years and, hopefully, twice as many more.


End file.
